London Bridge

Number of participants: Can be done with any size group. Large groups should be divided into teams of 2-4 people each.

Time frame: 45 minutes.

Supplies needed: Paper and paper clips. Each team should be given 20 sheets of paper and 20 paper clips. This is not an economically friendly exercise so if you have scrap paper (think fax verifications) use that because most of the paper can’t be reused after this exercise. I also provide each team with 3 sheets of blue paper to use a “river” so they can see the distance the bridge has to span. Paper clips can be either large or small or a mix of both.

Setup/room requirements: This exercise works best in a room with tables, enough for each team to have its own space. It can be done on the ground if necessary.

Safety precautions: If you group might engage in self harm activities it is best to count your paper clips again at the end of the exercise to make sure no one steals any.

Instructions:

Explain to your teams that they are in a competition to see which team can build a bridge with the least materials and in the quickest amount of time. They will be given a planning phase to design their bridge and then all teams will compete at the same time to build their bridge the quickest. Final scores will be tallied based on how much of the team budget was used in the building process.

The rules are as follows:

1. Each team must build a bridge using only paper and paper clips that can stand independently for 1 minute. Paper can be folded, twisted, ripped or rolled to use for the bridge, but the actual bridge must be made of paper-no intertwining paper clips!

2. The bridge must touch the ground on both sides, be 11 inches tall (the length of a regular sheet of paper) at its center point, and 33 inches wide (the length of 3 sheets of paper laid side to side).

3. Each team will be scored based on their remaining budget when the build is over. Each team will begin with a budget of $10,000. The teams will incur costs as follows:

-$100 for every sheet of paper used, whether that be a whole sheet or just part of it. Paper clips are free.

-$2,000 for every support/stanchion built in the river

-$100 for every ten seconds(or part of ten seconds) it takes to build the bridge

-Each team’s final profit will be $10,000 minus those costs.

4. Each team will be given 15 minutes of planning to design their bridge and practice how they are going to put it together. Teams can use as much of their paper as they’d like but what they have left at the end of the planning phase is all they have for the actual build. When the 15 minutes is up have each team give you an estimate of what they think their final cost will be.

After each team has given their estimate inform them that they will now be doing the actual build. They must start over with all new paper, no using previously folded papers. On your go have each time build their bridge calling out to you when they are finished. You would then write down their end build time (the one that costs them for each 10 seconds) and then begin the time to see if their bridge can stand for one minute. If the bridge collapses before one minute have them fix it and continue to track their time.

Once all teams have finished tell the teams their build times and have them calculate their final costs for materials and build time. Announce the final costs to everyone to see who is the winner. You may have teams that simply can’t get their bridge to stand and at that point it is up to you to decide when to call an end to the challenge

What works best

1. Encourage creativity with using the paper! I have seen teams complete this by only using 4 sheets of paper, one of which was ripped into strips to form the actual bridge.

2. Before you begin have your own rules as to what the bridge should actually look like. Can they be creative and make it more of an artistic bridge or should it actually look like a bridge cars could go across? That is entirely up to you.

3. Encourage teams not to overthink the bridge, that is a recipe for not accomplishing the task.

How to process-items you could discuss

1. The importance of planning-how difficult would it have been to just build the bridge without trying out a few ideas?

2. There is no perfect-the bridge may not look exactly like you imagined it would but did it meet the requirements?

3.Value of support in life-the bridge couldn’t stand without at least one support in the river, or at least I’ve never seen it happen.

4. Not overusing our resources-it’s good to have resources, like an abundance of paperclips, but using all of them would’ve weighed the bridge down. Just like overusing our resources in life can leave us feeling overwhelmed and confused.

Feel free to contact me with questions on how to implement the intervention and if you would like processing suggestions. Good luck!